Patna/Bhagalpur: A Bhagalpur court on Saturday issued arrest warrants against nine persons, including Union minister of state for health and family welfare Ashwini Choubey's son Arjit Shashwat, over the communal flare-up in Bhagalpur district's Nathnagar on March 17.

Arjit, however, maintained that he was not absconding. He was also spotted brandishing a sword at a Ram Navami procession in Patna on Sunday.

Additional chief judicial magistrate (I) A.K. Srivastava ordered non-bailable warrants against all nine accused, including Arjit and BJP Bhagalpur town unit chief Abhay Kumar Ghosh, on Saturday evening after going through the case diary submitted by the station house officer (SHO) of Nathnagar police station, around 230km east of Patna.

The inspector, in his petition submitted to the court, maintained that all the nine accused were "outsiders" who were evading arrest in the case (No.176/18), and may create law and order problems if they remained at large.

The case names nine accused and 500 unidentified persons. The BJP workers, including Dev Kumar Pandey, Anup Lal Sah, Pranav Sah, Pramod Verma, Niranjan Singh, Sanjay Bhatt and Surendra Pathak, are accused of taking out a procession with arms and without permission from the district authorities.

The procession sparked skirmishes, and several police personnel also suffered injuries in the clashes between two rival groups.

Bhagalpur additional public prosecutor Om Prakash Tiwary said that among the charges slapped on the accused, sections 353 and 295 (A) of the IPC are non-bailable while the remaining sections, such as 147, 148, 149, 188, 153(A) of the IPC and section 3D of the Bihar Loudspeaker Act, are bailable.

"Why should I be afraid of the police?" Arjit told The Telegraph from an undisclosed location on Sunday.

"I have not committed any wrong. If the police want to arrest me despite that, let them do so," he added.

Arjit had told The Telegraph on Friday that chief minister Nitish Kumar "is my guardian.... He knows everything and his support is also there with me."

A close confidant of Arjit said on Sunday that the BJP leader would "honour" the court order, adding: "Wait for a day or two, he will take a decision."

Bhagalpur SSP Manoj Kumar said: "The police will act according to the law and proceed in the case on the basis of evidences."

Another Bhagalpur police officer said copies of the warrants would be provided to police in other districts too.